THE HORSE IN MOTION. 103 



and the last stages of their art were worse than the first ? And here 

 I would diverge still farther from the path I had marked out for 

 myself, to protest against the soundness of that dogma tliat art should 

 represent things as they scon. I will not enter upon a discussion of 

 the general proposition, it would carry me far beyond the special 

 subject of this essay ; but I will limit myself to the consideration 

 of the proposition as it is applied to the representations of the move- 

 ments of the limbs of the horse in motion. I am often told that 

 we do not represent the spokes of a carriage-wheel in motion as dis- 

 tinct spokes, but they are made to run together as they really appear 

 to the eye, where new images are made upon the retina before the 

 first are lost. Lightning is represented as a zigzag line, when in 

 reality it is a spark ; but this spark moves with such inconceivable 

 rapidity that it is quite impossible to calculate the time of its passage. 

 The h'ack of the electric spark is unquestionable, and when that is 

 represented there is no untruth : it would be impossible to represent 

 lightning in any other way. Lightning is not only the spark, but 

 the track it describes in the sky also. To represent them thus is 

 to represent the actual truth, and so it expresses action, and no error 

 is inculcated. But does one ever represent the horse's legs in that 

 manner to express their action? Why not? If it cannot be done, 

 why assume a false and hackneyed position that cannot be true ? 

 Why must every equestrian statue in Europe follow the model of the 

 Antique Balbi in the Neapolitan Museum, with the bones of the fore 

 leg flexed at right angles, and the other three feet upon the ground ? 

 No such position was ever true, nor can it seem to be so to any one 

 who gets his impressions from nature. 



The theory of the run and the mechanism of the locomotive 

 apparatus of the horse will soon be common property among admirers 

 of the animal ; and when that knowledge becomes general, all the 

 famous paintings in which he is a prominent figure in the "gallop" 

 will be relegated to the museums as examples of old masters, to 

 illustrate the progressive stages in the development of art. 



If the theorv of the run is understood, the action in the canter will 

 present no difificulty; for the theory is the same in both, and the varia- 



